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For the Sake of the Children

WHEN Douglas Robinson and Michael Elsasser moved in together 25 years ago, they bought matching bands, layered in white, rose and yellow gold, and said private, personal vows.

They wore them in 1993 when they were among the first New Yorkers to register under the new domestic partnership law.

Eight years later they exchanged those same rings again, this time during a ceremony at Riverside Church in Manhattan that included their two adopted sons.

And on Sunday they plan to use them once more, when they are married at the city clerk’s office, on the first day it is legal to do so in New York State. The rings are tighter now, and it may take more than a little soapy water to slip them off so hey can be slipped back on. Their sons, in turn, are grown and will serve as witnesses and best men.

Marrying when you already have children scrambles the traditional order of things, giving deeper meaning to some parts of the process, and raising questions about the significance of others. What does marriage change when you have been together for so many years? What does marriage mean when you have already signed piles of legal documents that declare yourselves each other’s health care proxies, and heirs and guardians of your children?

“We’ve been married a long time,” Mr. Robinson said, echoing the feelings of so many same-sex couples. “This I don’t consider a wedding. I consider this a legal step in the right direction for the validation of our family.”

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Seven-year-old Kate Lai-Borows thinks her mothers, Amy Lai and Carrie Borows, are already married. There are photos of the women’s 2003 commitment ceremony throughout their West Village apartment, a step they took before Ms. Borows became pregnant. Both women wear wedding rings. And their family arrangement is so mundane in Kate’s eyes that when a schoolmate asked “Why do you have two moms?” she replied, curiously, “Why do you have a mom and a dad?”

On the night last month when the New York State Senate voted to legalize same-sex marriage, Ms. Lai, who works in financial services, had to explain. “There’s the commitment that two people make in their hearts and then there’s the commitment that two people make in the government,” she told her daughter, who promptly announced that she would be the flower girl in the wedding and would wear her own bridal gown.

Instead, Ms. Lai, 42, and Ms. Borows, 46, will be married on Sunday without Kate present; her mothers don’t want to expose her to the threatened protests at the clerk’s office. Facing down such protesters themselves is their statement that this law is long overdue, and that they have mixed feelings about celebrating when so many of the rights given heterosexual couples still won’t be available to them.

New York’s new law does not change the fact that “we still don’t have federal protections,” Ms. Lai said. The federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, still means that they cannot file joint federal income tax returns, or inherit directly from each other without taxation, or be recognized as the parent of a spouse’s child without a full adoption. “The things that define a family are still not guaranteed to us,” Ms. Lai continued.

On the other hand, says Ms. Borows, who is a stay-at-home mom, much of the reason the couple is eager to marry is that they are parents. “I don’t know how strongly I would feel if I didn’t have a child,” she said. “All Kate’s life we have taught her that she is part of a bigger world. That there are laws that are old and that need to be changed, and that this is a time in history, like freeing the slaves and giving women the right to vote, when things changed. For us to not get married is pretty much telling her that the fight wasn’t important.”

Photo

A FAMILY Sarah Ellis, left, and Kristen Henderson with their children, Thomas and Kate Ellis-Henderson, at home in Sea Cliff, N.Y.Credit
Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Sunday’s ceremony might not include Kate, but the party planned for a later date certainly will. In fact, the couple hopes to fill the room with children. “This time there will be tons and tons of kids,” Ms. Lai said. “When we did this the first time, none of us had any yet. Now nearly every couple we know does.”

Sarah Ellis, 39, and Kristen Henderson, 40, were almost married right before their first child was born two and a half years ago. Both women were nine months pregnant at the time (it’s a long story, and you can read the whole thing in their book, “Times Two: Two Women in Love and the Happy Family They Made”). They had gotten a marriage license in Connecticut on a Friday afternoon, planning to return on Monday for the actual wedding, but Ms. Henderson went into labor on Saturday, with Thomas; Ms. Ellis gave birth to Kate two weeks later.

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The months and years after that were a blur of sleep deprivation, diaper changes and a major health scare for one of the babies. Ms. Ellis worked full time in marketing at Real Simple magazine; Ms. Henderson traveled constantly as a vocalist and bass player for the rock group Antigone Rising. Planning a wedding in a state not their own didn’t even make it onto their to-do list.

They still have no time (Ms. Henderson had to clear their Oct. 22 wedding date with her band’s manager), but they are putting marriage at the top of the list now because of their children.

“I think the reasons to marry are different for families with kids,” Ms. Ellis said. “With kids you have to have legal structures in place to protect you as a family, so this isn’t about the legal commitment. We made that a long time ago. What’s more important is that, for your children, you are validating their parents. Which will make them, even though they didn’t realize it before, equal to all the other children on the playground.”

Added Ms. Henderson: “We feel like we’re marrying the kids. They are both hyphenated, Ellis-Henderson, and when we get married we’re going to do that, too. We’re taking our kids’ names.”

That a family should share a name is one of the many traditions to which they are finding themselves drawn. “When you spend your whole life knowing that you don’t have this right, it takes time to figure out what your dream wedding is,” Ms. Ellis said. “We don’t want to be two women in white gowns. That doesn’t feel right to us. But we are traditional. We want those moments in a marriage.”

So they have changed their Facebook status to “engaged,” and Ms. Ellis in particular can’t wait to register for china. They are a little giddy about using the word “fiancée.” But then there are the far less traditional moments, like when Thomas whirls around their home in Sea Cliff, Long Island, shouting, “My moms are getting married, my moms are getting married,” or when they mentally wrestle with the part of the ceremony where the father walks the daughter down the aisle and kisses her goodbye at the altar.

“I think we are past a man giving me away to the new man,” Ms. Henderson said. “Maybe we should have the kids give us away to each other?”

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Mr. Robinson and Mr. Elsasser tried to marry once before, too. In 2004 they walked into City Hall and filled out the license paperwork, one of five couples who filed a landmark lawsuit to change the law. They were handed a photocopied letter saying that only men and women could marry in New York, and never got beyond the anteroom.

Like many a long-married couple, Mr. Elsasser, 56, a textile designer, and Mr. Robinson, 60, a project manager for Citigroup, have a favorite restaurant where they can be found almost every Friday. It’s near their Harlem home, and they were there the night the same-sex marriage bill passed in Albany.

They plan to return for their reception after the ceremony, where they hope the boys who know them as Poppy and Daddy will give toasts. The fathers are relieved that the wedding lottery didn’t force a postponement, because Justin, 26, juggles three jobs in Brooklyn and getting time off is tricky, and Zachary, 22, is a student up in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and faces a six-hour drive back home. Sunday was the only day that worked.

“We are working the wedding around the kids,” Mr. Robinson said.

Correction: July 25, 2011

An earlier version of this article misidentified Sarah Ellis's employer as InStyle magazine.

A version of this article appears in print on July 24, 2011, on Page ST8 of the New York edition with the headline: For the Sake of the Children. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe